Whicker: Kings discarded Brayden McNabb, then he discontinued their season

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Golden Knights defenseman Brayden McNabb (3) is mobbed by teammates after scoring what turned out to be the only goal of the game during the second period of their victory over the Kings on Tuesday night at Staples Center. McNabb, a former King, helped Vegas sweep the best-of-seven first-round playoff series. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

LOS ANGELES — When the music stopped, Brayden McNabb was the man left standing.

The Kings left him hanging in the expansion draft last summer, and Vegas took him. It left no ripples in L.A.’s lake.

McNabb was a 6-foot-4 defenseman who struggled for minutes in L.A. He wasn’t known for his skill. The coach at the time, Darryl Sutter, did not treat him in avuncular fashion. Although the Kings left Dustin Brown and Martin Gaborik unprotected in hopes the Golden Knights would absorb their salaries, they never thought they’d miss McNabb.

“It was a weird day,” McNabb said Tuesday night, as a whirlwind of unforeseen events returned him to Staples Center, put a series on his stick and let him win it.

“I remember getting the call from Blakie (Kings general manager Rob Blake). I didn’t really know what to think the whole summer. I didn’t know many of the guys in Vegas. I wasn’t sure I’d even make the team.”

McNabb did make the team. He went to the NHL Awards Show and wore a Golden Knights sweater, the first player to do so in public. In November he signed a four-year, $10 million contract, the kind he never would have gotten in L.A. He and Nate Schmidt, a refugee from Washington, became the Golden Knights’ top defensive pair.

The season began and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury won three games and James Neal scored four goals. Then Fleury got hurt and another goalie got hurt and another got hurt. The Knights kept winning.

On Tuesday, four minutes into the second period, McNabb saw open ice.

“I don’t usually join the rush very much,” he said later.

On the opposite wall, Jonathan Marchessault took a hit from the Kings’ Christian Folin and still got the puck away to William Karlsson. Since Folin had taken himself out of the play with that self-indulgent hit, the Knights had numbers.

Karlsson fed Reilly Smith. Kings goalie Jonathan Quick and winger Alex Iafallo trained their eyes on him. McNabb then materialized on the right side, holding his stick high to load up his shooting motion, and Smith delivered the puck into his downswing. McNabb fired before Quick or Iafallo could react. Maybe they never saw him at all.

“Smitty made a great play, just kind of froze both of them,” McNabb said.

McNabb saw the puck go in and pumped his fist. It was his sixth goal of the season, and it put the rest of the game in the hands of Fleury, who won a Stanley Cup nine seasons ago in Pittsburgh, who got the edge of his glove on a frontal attempt by Dustin Brown at the very end.

The Knights won 1-0. They won the series 4-0. Every game was decided by one goal. The series lasted four games and most of two overtimes and the Kings had a lead for only 33 minutes. Quick had a save percentage of .947 and didn’t win.

The Knights move on, most probably against San Jose. The Kings head for The Lake, with a 1-8 record in postseason games since (A) Alec Martinez beat the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist for the 2014 Stanley Cup and (B) Slava Voynov was arrested three months later.

A year ago the Vegas roster was hiding in plain sight, pebbles in a landslide, on a board in General Manager George McPhee’s office amid the names of everyone who would be available.

McPhee had more liberties than his expansion predecessors, primarily because owner Bill Foley put up $500 million to get into the league and expected a fair deal. Marchessault, Fleury, Smith, James Neal, David Perron and Eric Haula were accomplished NHL players, and the Knights drafted experience as well.

But the Knights played ravenous hockey from the beginning of the season, getting better by the week and within almost every game. The Kings couldn’t score because they couldn’t find room, because they were sped up, because they got tentative in the face of all those shot-blockers and all that potential for turnovers.

They had a power play with 7:44 left and Dion Phaneuf got the puck on the left point three times with loads of space. The puck hasn’t gotten to the net yet.

Anze Kopitar held the puck too long on one promising possession, was stifled by Fleury’s skate on another. The Tyler Toffoli-Jeff Carter-Tanner Pearson line went four games without a point. The net traffic was minimal, the passing was imprecise, the odd-man rushes were nonexistent. The Kings ended the series 1 for 13 on the power play.

“In the first period we were able to get some pucks behind them, were able to create some opportunities,” Coach John Stevens said. “After that we didn’t do as much, and we started making some turnovers, and then we had to start chasing the puck back in our zone, and maybe we got tired.

“The chances were there. We just didn’t capitalize. Tonight was probably our best game.”

McNabb stood in front of his locker, TV lights in his eyes, struggling to sort it all. He admitted it felt “real good” to beat the team that had tagged him and put him in the yard sale. He also said he had a lot of friends on the Kings, and he knew how a loss like this could sear their souls.

He grew up on a 7,000-acre wheat farm in Davidson, Saskatchewan, nearly two hours from Humboldt, the town that grieves for the 16 Broncos players and staff who were killed in a truck-bus collision. So much to deal with, so soon after McNabb felt a career slipping off his fingertips.

Now those hands had created another historical marker.

Someone asked how far the Knights could go. McNabb said he didn’t know.

“I think we’ll go about it the way we’ve gone about it all along,” he said. “We’ll look at the next game and try to win that.”

Win 12 more next-games and you’re the last team standing. “Maybe Turk will give us a couple of days off,” said David Perron, referring to Coach Gerard Gallant. Maybe so, but neither the Knights nor their possibilities seemed exhausted.

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